Convenience foods typically require a minimum amount of consumer preparation and, thus, are in high demand to accommodate today's busy lifestyles. Microwave ovens are often used to heat or thaw convenience foods to an edible condition. Microwave ovens have also been used for cooking. However, with regard to pasta dishes, microwave ovens have typically been limited to the thawing of frozen pasta and/or the heating of pre-cooked, acidified, frozen, or chilled pasta dishes because of problems associated with pasta boil-over in the microwave oven during cooking.
In general, when noodles are cooked on the stove top, boil-over can be easily be prevented or controlled by adjusting the heating power and/or monitoring the boiling conditions. However, when microwave ovens are used for such cooking, the heating power cannot be easily controlled by monitoring and/or manipulating cooking conditions. Accordingly, cooking pasta using a microwave oven often results in boil-over and associated problems.
A traditional solution to the problem of boil-over during stove top cooking of pasta is constant and/or frequent stirring along with control of heating conditions. However, the nature of microwave cooking does not make such stirring or control of heating conditions viable solutions. Frequent stirring would also significantly reduce consumer convenience normally associated with microwave cooking (i.e., cooking with minimal consumer effort and/or intervention).
Another means to prevent boil-over during stove top cooking of pasta, is the use of an oversized container (i.e., allowing significant amount of space above the surface of the water) to allow for high boiling within the container. Typically, boil-over can be prevented by cooking pasta in a container more than three times the volume of the uncooked pasta/water mixture. However, packaging convenience foods in oversized containers is disadvantageous because the large containers appears to be only partially full (generally on the order of about a third full) after it is fully cooked which may lead to dissatisfied consumers who may think the product is not fully cooked or may feel cheated because they did not get a full product. Moreover, if the cooking container is included within the product package, the package will requires a larger amount of shelf space in a grocery or retail store.
As a result, in most current microwave oven pasta products the pasta is cooked in a bowl supplied by the consumer which supplies enough space above the surface of the water to prevent boil-over. However, this creates added preparation time and inconvenience for the consumer. In addition, the consumer may choose a bowl too small and boil-over may still occur.
Accordingly, there is a need for improved methods for cooking dried pasta that significantly reduce boil-over in limited volume containers which allow for preparation of pasta in microwave ovens starting with dried pasta.